My Love Letter Time Machine - Victorian History
Ingrid Birchell Hughes
Shortlisted for both the Independent Podcast Awards 2023, and the International Women's Podcast Awards 2023 + 2022. Unfolding the Victorian historical drama within the love letters of Fred and Jane, a young couple from Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. Each week we travel 140 years back in time to discover the latest happenings. This is a true story, a love story, a family drama, all contained within Victorian social history. Ingrid has both sides (extremely rare) of a correspondence spanning 1878 to 1882 that her great great grandparents sent one another. They were ordinary working class people, trying to make their way in the world, first in the city of Sheffield and later in the town of Middlesbrough. There is a whole 'cast' of characters too from Fred's industrial innovator of a boss who advanced the steel making process - and took Fred with him, to Jane's sister Emma, who had her life splashed across the newspapers through no fault of her own. Against the background of the dramas going around them, Fred and Jane overcame family objection to their match and through their own will and determination, made a new life together.